Henry Lee Lucas | |
|---|---|
 Lucas in 1983 | |
| Born | August 23, 1936 Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | March 12, 2001 (aged 64) Ellis Unit, Huntsville, Texas, U.S. |
| Conviction(s) | Capital murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death; commuted to life imprisonment |
| Details | |
| Victims | 3 confirmed 250+ claimed[1] |
Span of crimes | 1960–1983 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Michigan and Texas |
Date apprehended | June 11, 1983 |
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001), also known as the Confession Killer, was an American convicted murderer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a claimed serial killer while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately 600 other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and the murders officially attributed to Lucas. He was convicted of murdering eleven people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson.
An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald showed that it was impossible for Lucas to have committed many of the murders he confessed to. While the Rangers defended their work, a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas concluded Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas's death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. Lucas later recanted his confessions as a hoax with the exception of his confession to murdering his mother. He died of congestive heart failure in 2001.[2]
Lucas's case damaged the reputation of the Texas Ranger Division, caused a re-evaluation in police techniques, and created greater awareness of the possibility of false confessions. Investigators did not consider that the apparently trivial comforts such as steak dinners, milkshakes, and access to television in return for "confessions" to crimes of extreme seriousness might encourage prisoners such as Lucas, who had little to lose, to make false confessions. Investigators also let Lucas see the case files so he could "refresh his memory", making it easy to seemingly demonstrate knowledge of facts that only the perpetrator would know. The police also did not record their interviews, making it impossible to know for sure how much information interviewers gave Lucas unprompted.
- ^ Gorney, Cynthia; Taylor, Paul (April 15, 1985). "The Killer Who Recanted" – via washingtonpost.com.
- ^ Horton, Adrian (December 5, 2019). "He was America's most deadly serial killer – but it was all a lie". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved April 8, 2020.